For The Love Of Port

A very well written article on the subject: http://www.academicwino.com/2017/01/min ... ialnetwork

Interesting read----I believe the schist in the Douro really is a secret ingredient to great port. It's really noticeable (the lack thereof) in port wines not from Portugal.

Personally, while I use the term minerality in tasting notes, I think it way overused. For me, it's wines with high acidity coupled with a certain leanness in the palate. It is NOT the taste of minerals. Vines grown on certain types of soils will tend to produce those acids in their grapes which give the impression of minerality.

I've thought of minerality as a form of terroir, not as a substitute for the word terroir as suggested by some of the people in the study. Not every terroir offers minerality. A place like Paso in the east doesn't give minerality in the terroir, but it often gives dust. I'm not sure I'd think of it in terms of leanness and acidity, as Eric suggests. Sometimes with Douro and Priorat reds I get the candied rock taste, and I wouldn't necessarily think of them as lean and high acid wines. Spring water and chocolate can show differently based on terroir, also. What explains minerality in water? Is that a fair comparison to wine? Times like this I wish I was a chemist, anyway.

Interesting.

Having been completely new to wine when I started drinking Port ~13 years ago, I had to develop my vocabulary on my own. When I heard people refer to minerality, I assumed they meant that it tasted like minerals, so that's how I use the term. Think of sticking an unused spoon in your mouth, or licking a (very clean) hammer, or something like that. I associate the term with graphite, steel, iron, etc, on the palate. For me, "minerality" means "tastes like metal." Not to be too morbid, but if you've ever licked some of your own blood off of a cut, blood has a distinct "minerality" flavor to it. Pretty sure it's the iron content.

Of course I have no idea what causes it, but it's a distinct flavor profile for me. Rare, but easily identifiable.

I've never used the term for acidity. Metallic or like rocks, granite, maybe limestone ...

Sent from my XT1060 using Tapatalk

I tend to primarily associate minerality with slate or similar, more than metallic.

Glenn E. wrote:Interesting.

Having been completely new to wine when I started drinking Port ~13 years ago, I had to develop my vocabulary on my own. When I heard people refer to minerality, I assumed they meant that it tasted like minerals, so that's how I use the term. Think of sticking an unused spoon in your mouth, or licking a (very clean) hammer, or something like that. I associate the term with graphite, steel, iron, etc, on the palate. For me, "minerality" means "tastes like metal." Not to be too morbid, but if you've ever licked some of your own blood off of a cut, blood has a distinct "minerality" flavor to it. Pretty sure it's the iron content.

Of course I have no idea what causes it, but it's a distinct flavor profile for me. Rare, but easily identifiable.

That's how I think of it....but to me its does taste like slate, limestone...well rock.

My understanding of minerality is that it's often caused by the presence of nitrogen-containing compounds that are cyclic in nature. The amount of these compounds is known to be influenced by the nature of the soils upon which the vines are grown. These are organic compounds and are not absorbed from the soil. It's just a change in the balance between the hundreds of chemical substances normally present in wine in a certain direction.